Critiques: the Official Theories of the Attack

The official account of the attack is, on its surface, simple.
Nineteen suicide hijackers, motivated by hatred for American's freedoms,
hijacked four jetliners and piloted them into the World Trade Center
and Pentagon.
The Twin Towers, weakened by the crashes and fires, collapsed,
raising the death toll to nearly 3,000 people.

Underneath this account's simplicity are numerous assumptions
about how the events transpired.
One such assumption is that the jetliner crashes and fires
were sufficient to cause the total collapse of three steel-framed
skyscrapers with numerous features of controlled demolitions.

Collapse Theories of WTC 1,2, and 7

Collapse theories of the Twin Towers and WTC Building 7
have commonalities and divergences.
Some critiques address general forms of the collapse premise,
while others address specific theories, such as those advanced
by the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST).

Video Analyses of NIST's WTC Investigation

Physics teacher David Chandler
(www.911SpeakOut.org)
created a series of video analyses of the destruction
of WTC Building 7 and describes how the content
of the videos contradict the claims of NIST in its Final Report.
Chandler also analyzes NIST's claim that
there were not loud sounds of explosives.

Military Response to the Attack

The official story of the immediate military response to the attack
has undergone
three major revisions
since the attack occurred.
The second revision stood unchanged between September 18, 2001,
when NORAD published its Response Times document,
until the 9/11 Commission released its Report on July 22, 2004,
re-writing NORAD's timeline.

The most detailed analysis of the various accounts,
and particularly the Commission's,
is provided by David Ray Griffin's book,
The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions.
Half of the book --
Part Two:
The Commission's Defense of the US Military --
describes problems with the earlier versions of the official story
and disects the Commission's version.
Griffin's talk, The 9/11 Commission's Incredible Tales
highlights absurdities in the Commission's story.